Hi, I have a few forum members that seem to have bad grammar and can't spell all that good and they quite a majority of their sentences doesn't make sense. It's like as if they are 5-10 years old or they have only just started to learn English or only knows a bit of English. What would you do, would you give them a warning and then see what happens, would you ban them straight away or would you just leave them to it. At the end of the day, if the forum posts don't look that good and are hard to read then it's not going to really make the forum a success and worth anyone to signup to. What would you do in this situation?
Beginners have such situations....Keep a staff only for correcting those posts You can't lose your members...
Most of the members I've seen like that get shunned off the board. Honestly, if English is the 1st language of the member they need to learn to use it. If it's a 2nd language then they need to find a more suitable forum to post on. And of course if it really is a 10 year old, then they need their patents permission to post anyway
you can install a mod .. think is something about spellingcow or like it.. it will correct the wrong english
Why does it matter? It could help you rank for misspelled terms? Maybe kindly advise them the Google toolbar has a handy spell check feature?
That is what I would do. But if they are having a hard time expressing themselves, they probably won't get the answers they are looking for. Just leave it alone and they will probably move on soon enough. And good point, ascensions, about ranking for misspelled terms!
John, I guess you need to stop making your forum so appealing to them! This happens rarely enough on forums I am at to really let it bother me, but I understand the frustration.
Alot of times, I'll just go back in and hit the edit key, hit spell check on the google bar, and correct it. If they even notice, maybe they'll get the hint.
There is an important distinction between bad spelling and netspeak. If i c sum1 talkin liek this i'll tell them teh forum is not a chatroom. vBulletin has a few things which can help. Built in there is Tachy goes to Coventry which can be found in ACP > vBulletin Options. It sets the user on a MASS ignore. There is also the mod Miserable Users which is a real hoot. It sets up a series of errors based on percents that'll send the user to a 404, give a DB error, give slow load times, or send them to the wrong (but specified) page. Both methods are nice to get rid of the trolls that stay within your guidelines, and those that lied to bypass the COPPA information. I mean, there is no way some of the people I've seen on my forums are older then 12 based on the way they type.
For me, each member of my forum is a valuable asset. I don't think, I will ever ban anyone for poor grammar and misspellings. If there is any post which is difficult to understand, I just edit it myself.